Will ‘Megalopolis’ be the last American film?

Francis Coppola’s extraordinary new picture asks the essential question of whether American cinema can survive the people who make it.

In 1968, New Yorker film critic Penelope Gilliatt wrote: “I think Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is some sort of great film, and an unforgettable endeavor.” At the time, Gilliatt was a voice in the wilderness. The critics had mostly condemned the just-premiered 2001 as at best a boring slog. Many in the film industry considered it a disaster. As he watched the audience walkouts, an MGM executive reportedly said, “Well, that’s the end of Stanley Kubrick.”

The executive, of course, was hilariously wrong. Gilliatt alone got it right. 2001 was embraced by young audiences and proved a massive hit. Filmmakers the world over were stunned and inspired by it. “You made me dream, eyes wide open,” Federico Fellini wrote to Kubrick. Within a decade, even the most portentous critics declared it one of the greatest films ever made. Kubrick went on to perhaps the most illustrious career in filmmaking history. 

In her prescient and lonely review, Gilliatt wrote of Kubrick and 2001: “Technically and imaginatively, what he put into it is staggering: five years of his life; his novel and screenplay, with Arthur C. Clarke; his production, his direction, his special effects; his humor and stamina and particular disquiet.” Of the film, she called it “a uniquely poetic piece of sci-fi, made by a man who truly possesses the drives of both science and fiction.” 

The same, almost word for word, could be said of Francis Ford Coppola’s recently released Megalopolis. Indeed, the kinship is so remarkable as to beggar coincidence. Coppola also invested many years of his life and, it seems, almost everything he has into it—including enormous amounts of his own money. It has humor, stamina, and particular disquiet. It is a “uniquely poetic piece of sci-fi.” It is, in fact, uniquely poetic in almost every way. I have never seen another film quite like it.

I say this because I think that Megalopolis is some sort of great film, and certainly an unforgettable endeavor. At least a few other people think so as well, mainly other filmmakers like Spike Lee and Steven Soderbergh, who have taken up the cudgel for the picture in the face of near-universal ambivalence and/or disdain. The critics have been either perplexed by or violently hostile to the film, with many referring to it as one of the worst films ever made. Audiences have stayed away. Like many, I had the unfortunate (for Coppola) but in some ways welcome (to me) experience of seeing it shown to an otherwise empty house. In Hollywood itself, Coppola and the film have become a punchline, with the wags referring to it as Megaflopolis.

In some ways, these reactions ought to be expected. Schadenfreude is par for the course when a film by a legendary director like Coppola fails at the box office. Something much like it followed his 1982 disaster One From the Heart, which bankrupted him for decades. Moreover, Megalopolis is the type of film that, at least initially, is destined to be either polarizing or outright hated. 

This is somewhat proved by the fact that I am totally unable here to give a comprehensive summary of its plot. It would take pages to do so. Suffice it to say, the premise is that a genius city planner is driven by his own genius to construct a utopian city in the midst of the capital of a modern Roman Empire. He is opposed by political, economic, and social forces of all kinds. He mightily struggles against them alongside the woman he loves and who loves him. Beyond that, it can only be said that the film contains a strong streak of magical realism, with the planner being capable of stopping time itself whenever the mood strikes him. 

The film is, throughout, a collage of stunningly baroque images, edited together in an expressionistic rather than narrative style. Shots and scenes often spin around each other in associative rather than logical connection. This alone is more than enough to outrage all those who loathe cinematic pretension. And the film is, in a sense, quite pretentious. It is enormously ambitious and clearly seeks to convey what Coppola believes to be a profound message about the nature and fate of humanity. That message is not entirely comprehensible beyond a basic admonition to embrace the future and believe in the possibility of positive change. This is not, perhaps, nearly as profound as Coppola might think it is. But it is certainly less banal than the message of a terrible film like Contact, which both critics and audiences inexplicably adored.

But Coppola, though he may at times believe otherwise, has never been a philosopher. In his great films, he has displayed every quality not of the philosopher but the supreme dramatist. A dramatist who can take the largest themes, like power and corruption (The Godfather), the descent of a paranoid age (The Conversation), and the violence of man’s shadow self (Apocalypse Now) and transform them into effortlessly compelling and surprisingly original work. He is not the equal of Orson Welles or Kubrick, but like them, he hunts very big game indeed.

Megalopolis, in many ways, hunts the biggest game: namely, the future of humanity. It does not succeed in catching it, but the attempt is most certainly compelling and original. As a result, the film is above all interesting. More interesting, in fact, than anyone is willing to give it credit for. In this, it towers above almost anything American cinema has produced in recent years; certainly over anything that has achieved wide theatrical release.

For the most part, the best films of the past decade have been released on streaming services. Some of them, like Welles’s miraculously retrieved The Other Side of the Wind, were not even made in the 21st century. Others, like Martin Scorsese’s extraordinary The Irishman, were impossible to make in any other form due to the current impossible state of Hollywood. Almost none of them have been released on the big screen in anything other than very limited runs in select cities, usually for the purposes of Oscar qualification.

This simple fact points to the immense and perhaps tragic importance of Megalopolis. This importance is, in some ways, irrelevant to the film itself or its individual fate. Regarding the latter, I think posterity will be kind. Like Heaven’s Gate, another viciously derided picture, it may take a few decades for Megalopolis to “find its audience,” but it almost certainly will—even if it is only a small but dedicated cult of admirers. Certainly, a few idiots like Michael Medved will list it as one of the “worst films ever made” and “Megaflopolis” will be a buzzword for a time. But it is likely that, as they did after 2001, a great many critics official and unofficial will be forced to eat the proverbial crow.

More importantly, Megalopolis represents, in some ways, a crossroads in American cinema. In its audacity, both in content and production history, Megalopolis asks an ominous question: Can American cinema survive itself? The answer is unclear, but if the reaction to Megalopolis is any indication, the signs are not good. 

II.

It is generally agreed that American cinema is in a bad way; in fact, a very bad way. There is a good reason for this: Most movies made by Hollywood are bad and independent films are not much better. Hollywood appears to have largely given up even trying to make good films. Faced with ferocious competition from all manner of new media, it has retreated into churning out ruinously expensive and essentially interchangeable pieces of CGI spectacle. The Marvel films, for example, are all but indistinguishable from each other. Yet they have come to define the spirit of the industry.